


Stormcalling

by JenCforCarolina



Category: Destiny (Video Game)
Genre: Gen, Stormcaller, Titan Vanguard, Warlock Vanguard, the Vex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-02
Updated: 2016-04-02
Packaged: 2018-05-30 18:32:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,461
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6435700
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JenCforCarolina/pseuds/JenCforCarolina
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Love is not always simply staying when you could go. It’s when you never even realized leaving was an option. <br/>Selene finally finding her subclass, with her mentor on backup, just in case.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Stormcalling

**Author's Note:**

> [Find it on Tumblr here!](http://jencforcarolina.tumblr.com/post/137043923963/stormcalling)

The Martian atmosphere ignited, right where Ikora said it would.

It shook her to her core, nature’s display of raw power. It was supposed to be hers? She was supposed to do that?

Her mentor closed her eyes and let the feeling drain out of her, let the bliss and electrifying Light fill the empty space. Selene felt it in her lingering connection to the Void and envied Auburn’s ability to drain herself of fear and take the arc in it’s place.

“Let’s find you a good spot.” Auburn said, gesturing, but she did not move. Selene stared at her for a moment, fidgeting, her fingers longing for a weapon, however inept she was with them.

“Where?” She finally asked, sweeping her arm out to invite the Titan to lead.

Auburn just crossed her arms and shook her head. “Pretty sure you have to be the one to find the place. It’s your meditation.”

The wail of a Vex Goblin across the open rooftop startled Selene more than the sound off the thunderbolt a few seconds later.

“Okay.” She said. “Fine, I’ll look.”

She trudged forward, weapon at the ready, into the crumbling building. Auburn trailed at a few yards behind her, glancing left and right and pausing every so often, probably too ensure she wasn’t crowding Selene.

There was a pressure in the air. A strangeness that felt familiar, but in a much greater magnitude. It felt like when Auburn and Eyahn stood very close to her, charged and crackling, and all of their fireteam’s Light mixed together. They were what drew at her Void, altered it, gave it a new path and direction. Guardians could usually keep control of their own subclass very easily, only changing to match those around them if they desired, but Selene had never found very much control of anything at all. It was Auburn and Ikora’s hope, and her own in a way, that it was because she had not yet found her true calling, and that arc was the answer. Assurance came when in the wake of one of Eyahn’s blade dances Selene threw out a force palm and some of the Hunter’s arc broke off from the remnants of a corpse to follow.

She closed her eyes and dialed back her audio sensors, shutting out as much input as she could in an attempt to feel the Light and just the Light. She saw Auburn, behind her, a roiling storm but effortlessly calm at the core. She felt the storm around them, above them. She looked to the Void, muted and reserved, like a child after a tantrum. It was offended, she thought, and watched what it recoiled from to find the Arc.

She had no time for feelings, or the mimicry of feelings from an essence without emotion. She wandered down a hall, through a room, out into a courtyard.

She stopped, looked around her. They were on a terrace of a sort, nothing directly above them. The wall of the balcony crumbled away, leaving a ledge open to the empty sky in front, above, and below. She stalked forward until she was a foot from the edge. The air was charged, like an army of Titans before battle.

“Here.” She said, and planted her feet at shoulder’s length.

Auburn cocked her Vestian Dynasty, a small quiet thing. “I’ll keep them off your back and try not to make too much noise.”

“No.” Selene said. “It needs to be loud. I have to feel. When it’s quiet the Void takes everything away and I don’t feel. I need chaos, I need my mind to run faster, better. Please.” She stared imploringly at the Titan. “Let it be loud.”

Auburn shrugged and gave her head a little ‘whatever you say’ shake. “Anything for you, my dear.” She muttered and pulled her bold red and white machine gun from storage. Easily the loudest gun she had. Selene wasn’t sure if her mentor was honestly following her wishes or being a smartass. Regardless, it was what the Warlock had asked for, so she didn’t complain.

Auburn clicked her trigger and the noise began, screaming of Vex and of bullets and slap rifles.

Selene turned her back to the Titan and the Vex and stared up and out at the storm. It drew at her in a strange way, somehow magnetic but not in the relationship of metal to electricity but in the way of a body to a soul. She felt lighter on her feet, as if drifting on clouds. The world was calm for a moment until she took a metaphorical breath, exhaled void and sucked in…other.

It felt good, it felt new. She breathed again and-

She convulsed, shooting out a shockwave of Arc Light. It felt beautiful, a release of energy that took a part of her that she hated away with it. She felt joy and freedom, she felt powerful, useful. She held crackling Light in her hands like clay, something she could work with and mold, something she could finally use to fight.

She turned back to the skyscraper and set her sights on a wave of harpies. She let the Arc build, lifting her up and carrying her forward like a leaf on a river. She threw out her hands and the lightning obeyed, charging forward like hungry wolves. It devoured the harpies and their bodies exploded into metal shards. Static crackled between the pieces.

She moved forward and pumped arc into a Minotaur, then two others. She forgot where she was and became a conduit. Mathematical calculations of the arcing of the tendrils spun through her mind, some right and some wrong. The storm was predictable and yet it was not. It was life at its purest, it could be calculated and quantified but even she as the anchor, as the direction, could not control it’s every particle. Sometimes it chose to disobey.

It was perfect.

She was left, finally, in a wake. She hovered, lingering energy still trying to lift her into the clouds, back into the origin. When it too vanished and her feet went again to solid ground she stumbled, an ankle joint rolling sideways, odd and sharp. She fell but was caught from behind by her mentor’s strong arms. Electricity crackled from her robes to Auburn’s plasteel, flickering harmlessly around them both. She found her feet and steadied herself. Gave her foot a test rotation and found no damage. She’d never stumbled before, never been so out of touch with her own body.

“How was it?” Auburn asked. She was grinning, it showed in her voice.

“It was… different.” Selene balked at showing any true reaction until she understood for herself how she felt. She was beginning to quantify just how little time she had been in the trance. It had felt so much longer… “It’s not like it was anything extraordinary. You’ve run striker for over a year. Arc is nothing new, nothing unique.”

“No, it was special alright. It really was. A striker is a simple thunderbolt -a bomb- but you… you are a force of nature. And I could never be more proud of what you’ve accomplished today.”

She put her hands on the Warlock’s shoulders and stretched up on her toes and tapped the forehead of her helmet’s visor into Selene’s. She realized she’d never noticed Auburn was a little shorter than her. Her presence always felt so much larger.

“You’re uh… you’re proud of me?” She was still shaken, still a little giddy after the storm. But she could read the smile in Auburn’s shoulders.

“Very. And I’m so glad you finally found your calling.”

“Storm-calling.” They both laughed. It felt alien to Selene, but it still felt good.

“Can we go home now?” She asked. “I kind of just want to be home after all that.”

“Absolutely. My ship’s inbound. Just take it easy.” She wrapped an arm around her supportively and led her away from the edge of the building. “You know, I thought you might jump.”

“Jump?”

Auburn shrugged, an intimate sensation since her arms were still around Selene’s shoulders. “It was a fear more than a thought. I didn’t know how quickly I’d be able to follow, or if you’d get in trouble, forget to glide when all caught up in the storm.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

“Just something I thought you should know. Sorry.”

“It’s okay.” Selene waited and processed, evaluated her own thoughts. “I’m glad, that you said so, I mean.”

Jump, she thought, it would be irrational. And she realized why she thought it would be irrational, because she would be alone, left to deal with everything that entailed.

“Jump.” She whispered. “No, I’ll never jump. Don’t worry.”


End file.
